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Our future is nuclear: The rest is only wind (by Simon Jenkins)

THE BRITISH prime minister proclaimed on Tuesday that global warming was a “human and economic catastrophe” on which “time is running out”. The world, he said, must act. He would therefore refer the matter to the G8. But refer what?

If global warming is an imminent catastrophe, those who say so must follow the logic of the argument. Warming is apparently not like sunspots or asteroid strikes, phenomena beyond our power. Tony Blair clearly regards the Earth’s temperature as yet another public service in the portfolio of Her Majesty’s Government. But if so, he has only one path down which to go. He must build more nuclear power stations.

The government might cut down on air travel and car use by raising taxes on them, but it has done the opposite and made them cheaper. Gimmicks such as wind turbines are hardly relevant. Ministers have no interest in solar, wave or biomass transfer. If they really believe in the Apocalypse, only one technology is currently available to hold it at bay and that is nuclear power. All else is hypocrisy.

So did Blair couple his predictions of doom with plans for a new generation of nuclear stations to replace those being decommissioned after 2008? No, he did not. Did the Conservative leader, Michael Howard, speaking on the same subject the day before, pledge his own nuclear programme if elected? No, he did not. Both leaders regard global warming as a preventable disaster. Yet both refuse to accept the logic of their warnings. Was politics ever so cynical? No, it was not.

On global warming I am agnostic. If an honest scientist with no grant at risk tells me that the ocean is rising by a metre, I listen. If men such as James Lovelock and Sir David King warn me that my lifestyle may drown the Maldives and reduce Eastbourne to papier-mache, I am concerned. Or at least I am if they have a plausible solution.

But I also listen to those who claim that this is tosh. Climate has always changed say Bjorn Lomborg, Philip Stott, John Etherington and the Max Planck Institute. The causes are mostly, if not entirely, natural and beyond our control. Each spell of erratic weather, such as El Nino or Hurricane Ivan, is no worse than the last worst. Hurricane “hits” in America are actually declining. Climate change is chaotic and any linear extrapolation can be used to scare people witless. We would do better, says this group, to mitigate the impact of weather on poor people rather than spend trillions of dollars trying to reverse ecological evolution.

This is a disagreement with awesome implications. If the sceptics are right, we can relax. We can even relax if they are wrong in their prediction but right in saying we are powerless to turn the clock back. If the Sun is getting hotter, we are toast whichever way you slice it. Let us be charitable to each other in the interim and guard what is beautiful. Let us agree with Pope: “All nature is but art unknown to thee,/ All chance, direction which thou canst not see.”

The eco-warriors, however, cannot relax. They scream that mankind is Icarus, flying too close to the sun. The wax is melting. The wings are falling off. Something must be done. Yet they then retreat to handknits and political correctness. They demand costly reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, having an impact on others rather than themselves, and chase off to the next conference. (A bright spark has calculated that if all the aircraft to global warming conferences were cancelled it would save more greenhouse gases than all the wind turbines in the world.) Yet what did Blair offer his panting audience on Tuesday night? He is standing by his pledge to cut Britain’s CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2012 and increase to 20 per cent over 15 years the renewables component in Britain’s generating mix. Since emissions are currently rising and nuclear stations are closing from 2008, Mr Blair has no way of meeting these targets. There is no reputable scientist unbribed by government subsidy who regards them as remotey feasible.

Let us start at the beginning. If the world’s climate has indeed gone unstable, which in the context of eternity is unlikely, then human beings (rather than Mother Nature) are said to be responsible for 4 per cent of greenhouse gases. Kyoto wanted to cut 5 per cent of that 4 per cent, “scientists” wanted to cut 60 per cent. Even if Britain could achieve its 10 per cent renewables target, which it cannot, that would cut human emission by less than 0.1 per cent. The impact on global warming overall would be infinitesimal. Such an impact would be dwarfed by other greenhouse horrors such as methane release from melting permafrost or the disintegration of Greenland.

Blair’s sole figleaf in this bizarre business is wind. But the case for wind power as a serious component of the national grid is collapsing by the month, propped up only by soaring Treasury grants and statutory cross-subsidies. Figures about turbines “generating enough power for x homes” are rubbish. Claimed capacity is not output and output is not a substitute for fossil fuel.

Given the intermittency of wind, no grid can risk switching off its fossil-fuel generators for fear of a collapse in supply when the wind dies. Neither the Germans nor the Scandinavians have been able to close power stations through wind substitution. The conventional power stations must be kept running. The Irish have stopped taking wind power on to their grid because of this risk. Wind power may have local auxiliary uses, but it is irrelevant to the global warming account.

Science may one day find ways of storing energy from the restless elements, from wind and waves, and render their contribution to carbon reduction significant. As with offshore turbine parks, the cost would be astronomical. The Trade Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, said on Tuesday that “no one is coming forward with plans for nuclear power stations”. But that is because she will not subsidise them. No one applied to build wind turbines until the government threw money at them, now Ł300m a year. It is the most senseless investment ever approved by the Treasury. Farmers and manufacturers with lobbyists in tow may be tumbling over themselves to invest in wind. But the return is not commercial, it is subsidy.

If Britain is sincere about wanting to reduce carbon emissions it must build nuclear power plants. This is not revolutionary. A third of Europe’s energy is now nuclear, while Britain is heading towards zero. Nuclear investment is taking place across the world. Even America, which stopped such commissioning in the 1980s, is starting to extend nuclear capacity and plan new plants. Twenty per cent of American power generation is nuclear. If increased, this would do more for global warming than signing the Kyoto Protocol. For Blair to lecture George Bush on this at the G8 summit, when he has not the courage to renew his own nuclear capacity, would be the height of hypocrisy.

I remain unconvinced that global warming is the apocalyptic threat that Blair proclaims. But if it is, Blair cannot prance onstage clad in nothing but a few turbine blades in an intermittent breeze. He will have covered the coasts and hills of Britain in expensive follies. Otherwise he will be naked.

Nuclear power is expensive and problematic. But all power is problematic and only fossil fuel is cheap. Nuclear power may be hated by the green lobby, now thick as thieves with the turbine builders, but at least it works. It generates power that is plentiful and eco-friendly. If Blair believes that the future of the world is at stake, he cannot start counting pennies, any more than he does the cost of wind turbines. He certainly cannot quake before the Friends – or Foes – of the Earth.

I fear the trouble is that Blair does so quake. He regards making a decision on nuclear power as a greater threat to him than global warming is to humankind. That is the measure of this week’s humbug.

-The Times

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